There’s a very interesting thing the twenty most-watched television programs of the decade all share. Can you guess what it is?

The MAGNA Agency gathered the list, after excluding repeat showings of ratings winners like American Idol.

Time’s up. Figured it out, yet? Find out, after the jump!

Those twenty broadcasts have this in common: they all aired on broadcast networks. As popular as cable programming has become, and despite some breakout cable hits over the past several years, the twenty highest-rated broadcasts were all on one of the big four networks.

The top spot went, not surprisingly, to the Friends finale on NBC. Many on the list are sporting event broadcasts, like an individual night of the Olympics, or a World Series or bowl game.

Unfortunately, a few reality shows make the list, which pretty much guarantees that we’ll keep seeing them.

The biggest surprise to me was what ranked nineteenth: it was the 2001 broadcast of outtakes from The Carol Burnett Show. That show was hosted at Stage 33 at CBS, where Burnett did her show, and where The Price is Right has also called home for all of its 38 years. Carol was reunited with Vicki Lawrence, Harvey Korman and Tim Conway and they reminisced about the unexpected moments that happened over the years, although many of the “unexpected” moments were ones in which Conway managed to break up Korman.

That became an “expected” part of the show, and made the segments that much funnier. Backstage rumors report that it was more fun for the staff, too: they supposedly used to place bets on how long Korman could keep his composure!

I can honestly say that I saw four of them: I watched Friends and Everybody Loves Raymond say goodbye. I watched the Burnett special. And I watched the first season finale of Survivor. I now wish that particular show would just go away, but I’m clearly in the minority on that one!

How many of these twenty shows do you remember watching?